Dear friend,
The garden is past the gentle phase. Mugwort has shot up to my knees behind the back fence, the sage is throwing silver-grey new tips so fast the bees have started lurking, and the redbud at the edge of the lot has gone from a riot of pink to a few stubborn last blossoms with the first heart-shaped leaves pushing through underneath.
There's a particular fortnight in late spring — and we're in it — when the perennials hold more medicine in their leaves than at any other moment in the year. They have woken from the roots, drawn up everything they can, and packed it into leaf tissue. None of that has gone into a flower yet. Once the buds break, the plant pulls those compounds upward and the leaves turn bland.
The redbud is on a different clock entirely — it has already done the flowering and is now offering up three things in quick succession: the last few blooms, the first emerging leaves, and the young pea-pod seedheads coming behind. So this week and next, I'm cutting. Mugwort for tincture and dream pillows; sage for the gargle jar; redbud flowers for vinegar and lemonade before the wind takes the rest of them. Here's what I found on each.